Clear the Bridge!

by Richard O'Kane

  It was never boring this close to the enemy’s shore, but his patrol boats added a little spice and exhorting the lookouts became quite unnecessary. The midwatch took over, and we stayed in the same vicinity with only the addition of 156 and 256 megacycle radar to record. Its signal strength was just medium, three to four on a scale of five, and Ed reported that it was nothing like the signal from Nakano Shima on our last patrol, which had put the needle against the pin. Since it didn’t bite, we’d ignore it. Compared to many nights this had been calm indeed, but the continuous waiting and searching had been tiring, and the gray in the east was welcome. Hank took us down in his calm, unhurried manner, which always turned out to be as fast as any other dive. We would wait for the enemy submerged. The time was 0450, August 20.

  We had moved in a thousand yards, to two miles from the beach, before diving and confirmed the 50 fathoms shown on the chart by a single ping sounding. During the short time until we could see through the periscope, a morning mist had set in. It could be confined to a shallow layer above the surface but should burn off with the warmth of day. In any case, we were not significantly hampered, and it might even provide some protection against having our scope sighted. An early contact, a ship from the southwest whipping around Kantori Saki, seemed likely, so Fraz and I stood by in the conning tower during the first crucial hours and then joined the others for breakfast as soon as the forenoon watch had relieved.

  We might have known, for the phone buzzed before we had started eating. It was an inshore patrol, and we avoided by presenting our stern until she had passed. Her position gave a probable track for any ships that might follow, however, and we moved in another thousand yards. Fraz stayed in the conning tower for a sounding as soon as the patrol rounded the point and then came down for another try at his bacon and eggs.

  “Twenty fathoms, Captain,” he reported. “There should be one along any time now, Adams, hurry up with my breakfast!”

  It wasn’t clear whether the second part of his report was for me, Adams, or just a general warning to stand by. It became academic a half hour later when the hum of the 1MC stopped our conversation.

  “Captain to the conning tower. Ship bearing zero two two.”

  “That puts her inshore,” Fraz commented on our way up the ladder; he had the whole picture in his mind already.

  Only the tops of two masts and smoke were visible above the mist, but the separation of the sticks confirmed the navigator’s estimate. Welch had taken over the wheel, not waiting for general quarters, and rang up standard speed seemingly ahead of my order. Fraz gave the course, 290, straight for the beach. The Bells of St. Mary’s chimed, and Tang was on the prowl, ducking under sampans en route.

  We were no more than up to speed when it was time to slow, now in 15 fathoms if the chart was correct. Larry had us right on at 64 feet; Jones brought the scope to deck level, Caverly called the sound bearing, and I rode the scope up. It was all routine.

  “Bearing—mark! Range—mark!” and the scope was down. Fraz corrected the bearing from relative to true, 017. Jones read the stadimeter, 9,000 yards, and I called the angle on the bow 20 port. We had a good setup on a modern, medium-sized, engine-aft freighter. The escorts were two SCs, or sub-chasers, well clear to seaward on her port beam and bow. Unless they changed their patrol stations, we would fire from a position halfway between the escorts and the enemy ship.

  On succeeding setups, plot had the freighter well inside the ten-fathom curve, and we closed the track slowly with tubes ready forward, and aft should she veer out to seaward. Plot and TDC had practically identical solutions for the freighter’s course, 217 and 219; each had her speed at 8 knots. Caverly’s bearings and constant screw beats checked.

  “Five degrees to go, Captain,” Fraz warned. “The outer doors are open.” We would fire on a 123 track, so the torpedoes would come in from about 30 degrees abaft her beam. Jones brought the scope to waist height and then followed me up.

  “Constant bearing—mark!”

  “Set!”

  Her stack came on. “Fire!”

  Fraz hit the firing plunger and the torpedo left with a healthy zing. The second torpedo was aimed forward; her foremast came on the wire. “Fire!”

  Again Fraz hit the plunger, but the torpedo left the tube with a resounding clonk and did not run. We could fire another, but at 900 yards our first torpedo was halfway there. Ogden was counting for the 36-second torpedo run, 30 … 35, 36, 37, 38, and so it went for another half minute, when the first torpedo exploded inshore.

  Caverly grabbed a sounding during the rumble following the detonation. It showed but three fathoms under our keel, hardly enough to provide additional protection. We took the first eight depth charges at periscope depth, which was all right since we could see that the enemy was going to miss and was better than burying our head in shallow enemy seas, but we’d take deep water anytime. The detonations were not severe and came as single attacks instead of the salvos that had thundered down at Owashi Wan. This was probably the SCs’ tactic due to the limited number of charges carried, but it could have been just as frightening had we not had both of them in sight.

  Short bursts of speed with each detonation were carrying us to seaward, away from the patrols. A welcome sounding showed 40 fathoms under our keel, a depth where we could increase speed with small chance of being heard. Larry put us into a slow glide toward the bottom. All was quiet except for continuing depth charges astern. As Tang passed 200 feet, we heard Larry’s expected order, “Pump from auxiliary to sea.” De Lapp would now be cranking up the motor of the drain pump. But instead of the hum of the pump we heard shouts.

  Fraz dropped down and came back to report that two of the motor’s metal fingers, which held the carbon contacts, had broken off. It was not critical; we could blow ballast from auxiliary to sea, put a bubble in safety, start the noisy trim pump, or even hold Tang up with the planes while making repairs. Fraz did not interfere, and Larry requested permission to use the trim pump. The request before starting up the trim pump had become standard procedure if it was to be used in pumping to sea during evasion. We would not forget our experience west of Saipan when the destroyer had stayed with us hour after hour.

  De Lapp and the auxiliarymen completed silver-soldering the fingers shortly after we had leveled off. The failure had not been serious this time, but it brought home to all hands that our ship, just like any one of us, was not infallible. On the brighter side, the depth-charging had stopped after a total of 30. Though none were close, it was always a somewhat shaking experience, and all hands could use some relaxing time. There would be no more ships today; the seas were friendly in the deeps, and there we stayed, heading slowly to the southwest.

  While Charles and Basil practiced changing depth, the rest of us threw our ideas on the table, trying to come down with a logical reason for the miss and the failure of the second torpedo to even run. Perhaps more to the point, Hank and Mel left for the torpedo rooms to help check the hardware.

  7

  The first and then the second dog watch had been relieved. All hands had finished the evening meal, and we were a half hour into the evening watch when three blasts sent Tang to the surface. Following the pattern of our slowdown, we would charge batteries here at sea and let the boat cool down before moving on to the coast. There was no rush, for we were now confident of finding a ship at nearly any daylight hour. I only wished that the same confidence extended to our torpedoes, for we had not determined any sure cause for their apparent failure—theirs or ours.

  On to the west lay Shiono Misaki and Ichiye Saki, where we would attack, this time late in the afternoon, which would be closer to the shelter of darkness. We were not on the defensive, but we were acquiring a better and more sympathetic understanding of the problems that had undoubtedly beset our immediate predecessors in these areas. With similar torpedo performance, getting any ships from outside the 20-fathom curve would have required more luck than any boat might expect. Even inside, we were
having our troubles.

  Radar on 82, 99, and 261 megacycles, apparently from Shiono Misaki, buzzed the APR-1, but nothing came of it. The night remained quiet on till dawn, when Mel pulled the plug in the deep water off Okinokura Shima. We would move in slowly to give both the training and qualification programs an opportunity to regain some of their lost momentum and then join the enemy.

  The Japanese had other ideas, sending a large ship and two escorts around Shiono Misaki heading eastward and out of reach. It was like dancing a fly ahead of a hungry trout; Fraz’s Plan of the Day went into the GI can, and we were off to intercept the next ship. The course of 315 was far to the left of Okinokura Shima, but our ship moved like a fiddler crab directly toward the island due to the Kuroshio. The mooring board had proven correct again. Tang would be in an ideal position by noon. In the meantime we would search continuously, as a light chop made any sighting of our scope impossible.

  Dick’s shout brought us to the conning tower. He had a modern, engine-aft ship at a range of 8,000 yards, with her escorts well out ahead. She was heading west and offered a possibility; Tang was off and running. The time was 1039, not yet two hours since the first contact, and this time the general alarm involved all hands. For a time all looked good, for the enemy was slowed by the Kuroshio. The 3-knot current would not upset our torpedo attack, but a component of the current was affecting us. A 3,000-yard torpedo run was the best we could do; even full speed would have done little better. There had already been two ships, however, and there would be more; we’d wait for the next one.

  Another two hours passed, and now the bottom lay 14 fathoms under our keel. No ship could get by to shoreward. We turned left to parallel the beach, our 2 knots matching the Kuroshio, and waited; waited four minutes for Jones’s salty “Smoke ho!”

  This was what we were looking for, smoke and then a ship far enough off to track. The Bells of St. Mary’s rang out over the 1MC for the second time in two hours, and the compartments reported so quickly that the troops must have been still standing by. The ship was now in sight at 9,000 yards, the bearing placing her practically on the beach. We had a medium-sized, mast-funnel-mast freighter escorted by two SCs and a whale killer. Tracking soon had her on 290, exactly parallel to the coast, and coming on at 8 knots. The approach consisted primarily of ducking under the two SCs and turning left for a stern shot. Everything was falling in line for a 110 track and a firing range of about 1,600 yards when Fraz gave the customary warning, “Five degrees to go, Captain.”

  I had but one area of doubt. Had the freighter, in close to the beach, been subjected to the same current as had Tang? If not, our speed determination could be in error by as much as 2 knots. I would cover this possibility by spreading the wing torpedoes. Jones had the scope at deck level and brought it up smartly to my hands.

  “Constant bearing—mark!”

  “Set!” came from Mel. Her stack amidships was coming on.

  “Fire!” The first electric torpedo was on its way with a whine. The second Mark 18-1 went to a point one-quarter of a ship’s length ahead of the bow, the third to a point the same distance abaft the stern. If all was well, the first torpedo would break her in two. If we had some speed error, the first and second or the first and third torpedoes would hit. If we were way out, even beyond any logical guess, the second or third torpedo would hit. The time was 1317.

  We settled down to the long wait while the 27-knot torpedoes cruised on their way. The first hit should come in one minute and 50 seconds. Caverly gave us encouragement, for their whine was now blending in with the freighter’s prop noise. Ogden called the seconds to go, “Ten … five … three, two, one, zero.” There was no explosion. I held back an oath during the additional time required for our second and third torpedoes, and managed to swallow it during those 16 seconds. We had another minute’s run to seaward before the enemy was alerted by the explosions of all three torpedoes on the beach. We did not stop to admire them, and Larry had us leveled off at 200 feet when the first depth charges let go. They were not very close, and now with soundings as a guide, Tang reached deep submergence. The enemy had dropped 20, but our 100 turns had kept everything aft, including some late-arriving pingers.

  Frank, Mel, and Dick made a thorough check of the firing bearings, the actual gyro readings that had been recorded, the depth set, everything. Then in addition to setting the problem into the TDC, they broke out the Mark 8 angle solver. It was a slightly modern version of the prewar Mark 6, popularly called the Banjo. Most of us had wrestled with the latter, and if the correct graduations on the sliding arms were properly positioned over the curve with the correct color, you could read the right combination of gyro and lead angle if no one bumped it. The Mark 8 had clamping arrangements to overcome this difficulty and could come up with a solution as accurate as that of the TDC. My spread had covered any possible speed errors, and the coast of Honshu had taken care of the enemy’s course. Depth settings, hydrostat spring calibrations, and rudder throws notwithstanding, one or more of our torpedoes had run deep.

  We had no wounds to lick from the enemy’s depth-charging, but perhaps more serious, our confidence in our ability to put the enemy on the bottom was a bit shaken, and our pride, at least my own, was a little bent. There is but one thing to do when you fall off a horse, swing back in the saddle immediately. We had to keep slugging it out with the enemy, but I would at least be hesitant to attack on his terms, inside 15 fathoms, with erratic torpedoes. Luck had been on our side, but with our firing position pinpointed for the enemy and no hits to confuse him, the coin could easily flip the other way. There was only one solution, conduct some test firings where we could observe just what our torpedoes were doing.

  Fraz was in complete agreement with the decision, which was good since the plan called for disposing of three or four torpedoes. There remained only the selection of an appropriate place, and Fraz went back to the conning tower to check on the possible positions.

  The Kuroshio added 3 knots to our speed over the ocean floor, carrying us beyond Shiono Misaki by noon. A half hour later we came left, following the coast well to seaward toward Miki Saki. Frank reported Kantori Saki in sight at midafternoon. It marked the halfway point to Miki Saki, and the Kuroshio had determined the place and time for the firing; we would enter Owashi Wan, just to the north of Kuki Saki, at midnight.

  On the surface midway through evening twilight, our two navigators had a fine, sharp horizon. Their exact position for a departure could be doubly important when making the landfall this night. The engineers and electricians scurried with the battery charge, and both torpedo rooms buzzed. Tang seemed to come out of the doldrums, for all of the old hands knew what a night probe such as this might hold.

  The dark shape of Miki Saki loomed up at midnight and Kuki Saki minutes later. A single diesel moved us quietly around the points and into Owashi Wan. The bay was as black as the night and seemed to hold no resemblance to the roadstead I had seen through the scope. But those had been fleeting glimpses, and details of the shoreline were not on our minds. I slowed to one-third speed to provide more time for considering the contour of the land. Fraz and Jones were not finding everything to their liking either, for bearings and ranges of known landmarks did not jibe with the chart. Of course, the charts were not completely accurate, and the SJ’s side lobes added a bit of confusion. All fell in place when the bridge speaker blared, “Contact one point on port bow!”

  Bergman had a pip where no pip ought to be. We stopped and the bells chimed below for the third time since morning. With radar to coach us on, we now had a long, low shape in our 7 × 50s that was otherwise indistinguishable against the dark background of the land.

  We remained stopped while tracking worked on the ship’s course and speed. It did not take long, for her speed was zero, too. Stopped or anchored, was she viewing us? It took no encouragement to start moving slowly on a great arc to get her silhouette to seaward, away from the black background of the land. We were tracking all the w
hile and clear of the Kuroshio or its countercurrent; the enemy ship still plotted in a fixed position. She definitely had her hook on the bottom, well out in the bay.

  Now with the starlit sea as a background, we could make her out, a large patrol, anchored two miles in from Kuki Saki and asking for it! I shifted propulsion to the batteries so there would be no diesel sounds, for they would carry across this bay on such a still night as do noises on a lake. All tubes were made ready, for contrary to the War Instructions of the 1930s, which specified one torpedo for such ships, a patrol or destroyer might require any number of torpedoes; I knew. Our torpedoes aft were set on three feet.

  Speaking in whispers, we closed slowly, heading directly for the patrol ship’s beam. At 1,500 yards, identification became positive. The fore and waist guns, a structure abaft the bridge, and now the long depth-charge racks; it was surely the gunboat that had harassed us during our first visit, topping it off with those tooth-shakers.